Naděje a beznaděj aneb Tematické paradoxy v díle Lenky Lagronové
Hope and Despair: Thematic Paradoxes in the Works of Lenka Lagronová

Summary/Abstract: Using feminist literary methodology the article considers the works of the playwright Lenka Lagronová (b. 1963). Analyzing themes and language, it describes the features of ‘l’ecriture feminine’, which seems paradoxical here since it is guided by woman’s experience and imbued with elements of Christian mythology. In Lagronová’s plays one observes the construction of gender in the self‑discovery of the feminine in the characters. Here, however, woman’s body is understood to be contradictory – that is, something close to the heroines, though not quite recognized or traumatizing (in contrast to Jean Baudrillard’s ideas about the relationship between seduction and woman). The first part of the article therefore analyzes the frustrating social background of the heroines and their literal and metaphoric martyrdom. It seeks to demonstrate the extent to which the ‘aesthetics of suffering’ is typical of Lagronová in a Christian sense, though in gynocritical writing the depiction of woman’s suffering is frowned upon. That, the article argues, is also implied by Lagronová’s dual approach to the mythology of woman: the demythicization of woman as an object of male interest and a revision of the feminist heroine as a self-confident woman. The article perceives this equivocation also in the motifs: whereas, for example, the motif of blood in Lagronová’s work means the spilling of Christ’s blood, one can reasonably interpret the motif of water also in biblical and biological terms (analogous to the menstruation cycle). The second part of the article is devoted to a gender interpretation of narrativity. The author calls Lagronová’s plays theme‑free, unfinished, women’s stories, which may be dramatically static, but are dominated by the word. The strategy of narration is the only thing that suits the religious function of the plays and also women’s writing, because a vivid picture of woman’s body is given and yet the biblical symbol of Logos is completed. This point is argued in the article by showing the decay and demiurge function of Lagronová’s language, as well as the accumulation and reproduction of linguistic elements, the denial of the Logos of the utterance, which takes place here – in accordance with the theories of Hélčne Cixous and Julia Kristeva – through the return to physicality, in other words the rhythmicity and lyricism of language. Dialogue in Lagronová’s work runs, it is argued, against the logocentricity of language in masculine literature, because the heroines examine language in order to express their feelings in the world (in accordance with the pre-Oedipal relationship of mother and child, as described by the feminist linguists Cixous and Luce Irigaray). Although discourses of hope and despair are mutually exclusive, the author of the article sees the originality of Lagronová’s style in their indistinguishablity and inseparability.

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